Mineola Swingers Get Retrial

[two4youinswva]

Story Here.

This Tyler, Texas child abuse case has been going on for quite a while. It is absolutely disgusting what these people did, and it's nice to see that they are all going to spend a long time in prison.

What really pisses me off, beyond the obvious crimes committed, is the fact that they called themselves a "swingers' club".

So, now of course, the media reports it as crimes committed by the swingers' club. These people aren't swingers. They are apparently barely human.

It's enough of a bitch to deal with all the built-in misconceptions about what we do. Assholes like this certainly don't make it any easier.

I know this isn't really "Swingers in the News", but I've seen too many stories about this case online, and had to blow off the steam.

[/rant]

[LFM2]

Another hurdle to jump. Children in a swingers club. You and I both know that that's not a swinger thing and would never be allowed in a true LS environment. How is the public going to know? They won't. They'll belittle us for the crap they read to be true.

[Chris&Amelia]

And, unfortunately, anybody who publicly challenges this or suggests a correction will be tarred with the same brush and automatically considered a "pervert".

[JustAskJulie]

I would love to know how the "swinger club" label got attached to them.

[sereneiders]

Well, some times it's just about what helps better to sell a story.

Go figure, if the story were saying "a woman was convicted because she set up a place for pedophiles to watch kids perform sexual acts"... but instead of just a place, call it a "swingers club" and the story aquires another dimension. It isn't anymore about mere criminals involved with child porn, but about something we all know may involve your neighbohr, practiced by a lot of people around us that they even call a "lifestyle"... "ohhhhhh... so... they involve kids as well? how many of the so called 'clubs' features child porn?"...

See my point? it's about what sells the story, what opens the door for a follow up story. It's about bringing the story pertaining to the policial/crime section into the front page, pehraps to fill the void, to give the editors the excuse to avoid bringing up more serious (but compromised) matters, to do their best to keep the story rolling... and they succeeded! we're doing it!

[two4youinswva]

Originally Posted by JustAskJulie

I would love to know how the "swinger club" label got attached to them.

It appears they called themselves the "Mineola Swingers Club".

A Google Search returns a boatload of news articles with this name attached.

[vewybadcpl]

Yeah this story bothered me soo much I had to leave a comment on the site (under flaswingers). This is disgusting and misrepresentitive of the lifestyle totaly. Like we need "bad" press like this to further the misconseptions about the lifestyle.

Mr. Vewy

[theflamekasters]

as a parent of children in that age group, it is all i can do not to throw up. These people should be tortured until there are unrecognizalble then turned loose on the street with a sign that says i am a pedophile on them and see what happens!!!

[xxPabloxx]

I think there is ALOT of fishyness to this story so far from what I've heard:

A swingers club with hundreds of members... who watch children perform? Ummmm - how are you going to gather that many people and not have 90% of them narc you out? It's not like these are teenage kids - these are REAL younguns.

Is it possible that there is a custody battle going on here?

Is it more likely that a relative is commiting the abuse (rather than a bunch of strangers)?

Anybody remember the ritual abuse and sex games that supposedly went on at a kindergarten/daycare center... got everyone riled up... and the whole thing turned out to be bogus?

[xxPabloxx]

This was posted in a forum responding to the story - this guy put it better than me:

Mineola is a very small town; it's hard to imagine something this big not being known about. Certainly, they knew about the "Swingers Club" and something of that nature in a small town...

I suspect that the Mineola police department is only about 4 or 5 officers. The population of the city is under 6,000. Small towns of that size usually have poorly funded and undertrained police departments.

Ironically, according to Wikipedia, "Before 1873 the place was called Sodom."

However, I am having a bit of trouble actually believing this. It has all the earmarks of the infamous McMartin Preschool case in which the supposed victim children were fed the stories they testified to by the investigators and counsellors. False memories about events that never happened were instilled in the impressionable children by "therapists" who asked them leading questions, provided possible scenarios of depraved activities, and suggested the "correct" answers to children who wanted to please the adult therapists.

How did the "swing" club go about recruiting an audience for such a performance. Even swingers would most likely immediately report such child sexual abuse to the authorities. Swingers are generally interested in sex with other adults, not with children.

There was a mention of one of the children saying they had been video taped in their "performances." Was this video tape found? Was it used at trial? I saw no references to its use as evidence. It's a strange omission from the story if it was used.

I don’t see the earmarks of McMartin Preschool case that you listed in this case.

The evidence reported in these very poorly written newspaper articles appears to be only the testimony of the children. Other testimony was that of the landlord for the "Mineola Swingers Club" property who said when she found out it was being used for swinging, evicted them. Another was that years after the eviction, investigators found children's clothing and a book in the trash behind the building—a building that HAD been previously used as a children's day care center. Hardly probative. The rest of the evidence was the testimony of the foster mother, therapists, and investigators.

What physical evidence exists? Where are the video tapes? Video tapes are made so the taper can either re-view the event at a later time... or in this case for possible sale to the attending perverts. Were they found? If not, why not? What about medical examinations of the children showing penetration or other indications of damage? Where are the "costumes" that the children testified they wore for some of the "dances?"

In one report of a child's testimony, the child was directly quoted as saying they were taught how to touch their "private parts" and the "private parts" of their siblings. This is not the language that perverts would have taught them. The child also testified that they were taught using dolls before escalating to touching themselves and others. Dolls are much more likely to be used as exemplars in therapy and child abuse investigations. I don't see these adults who have been convicted of these crimes as being sophisticated enough to develop such an educational plan for their victims. To me, it seems more likely that the child may have added the dolls as props to his/her story from the experience of being asked to use them to demonstrate what was done to them or that they did.

This is exactly the type of testimonial evidence and really complete lack of physical evidence that raised serious questions in the McMartin Preschool case.

As I mentioned, how exactly do you build a business plan around the sexual exploitation of children in exchange for money? How do you advertise for your audience without the risk of someone reporting it? How do you find your fellow perverts to participate in this business? How do you bring the subject up with someone you suspect might be interested in seeing such a show? In a town of fewer than 6,000 people? Is this logical?

In the McMartin case, the children testified about perverted events taking place throughout the day—while parents dropped off and picked up kids, walked into classrooms, etc., and saw nothing amiss. The McMartin children also testified about video taping and actually watching replays of sexual activities and animal sacrifices on video... yet no video equipment was found at the site and NO videos were ever found. None of the children showed any physical indications of sexual abuse. It was this lack of logic to the case that caused people to look harder into the evidence and eventually resulted in all of the convicted people being pardoned and freed. All of the McMartin case was predicated solely on the testimony of the children that had actually been created by the investigators.

Were these people drug users? Probably. Were they swingers? Probably. Were they child abusers? Possibly. These newspaper reports do not provide enough information to say for sure. My BS-O-Meter was pegging over on some of the claims simply because most people don't act this way... and to increase the criminal activity to an audience without having ever had anyone call the authorities in the face of a well recognized crime is hard to swallow. It defies logic.

[JustAskJulie]

Latest Update:

Jury Selection To Begin Monday For Third Defendant In Mineola Swingers’ Club Case

[joseph3d]

It's very unfortunate their choice of words in calling this a swingers club. Real swingers would never allow children to be involved.

The government and media work together. Some legislator will now think a law needs to be written.

[ncmd_couple]

Ok, that is Tyler, TX I lived there many years ago, and you are damn right, if there had been a swinger's club where children were involved, shit would have hit the fan immediatly. Something is not right about this.

S

[Merric]

From Foxnews.com
Yeah, this’ll do a lot for swingers.
Kids Fed 'SillyPills,' Forced to Perform Sex Shows in Shocking Abuse Case
Monday, June 23, 2008

MINEOLA, Texas — In the windowless front rooms of a former day care

center in a tiny Texas community, children as young as 5 were fed powerful
painkillers they knew as "silly pills" and forced to perform sex shows for a crowd of adults.

Two people have already been convicted in the case. Now a third person with ties to the club, previously known in town only as a swingers group, is set to go on trial Monday not far from Mineola, population 5,100.

"This really shook this town," said Shirley Chadwick, a longtime resident of Mineola. "This was horrible."
Patrick Kelly, 41, is charged with aggravated sexual assault of a child, tampering with physical evidence and engaging in organized criminal activity.

In all, six adults have been charged in connection with the case, including a parent of the three siblings involved. Jurors this year deliberated less than five minutes before returning guilty verdicts against the first two defendants, who were accused of grooming the kids for sex shows in "kindergarten" classes and passing off Vicodin as "silly pills" to help the children perform.

Jamie Pittman and Shauntel Mayo were sentenced to life in prison. Kelly also faces a life sentence if convicted, and Smith County prosecutors hope for another swift verdict. Thad Davidson, Kelly's attorney, said his client passed a lie-detector test proving his innocence and worries about getting a fair trial in Tyler, 25 miles southeast of Mineola, which is in Wood County.
"I think it's impossible to get a fair trial within 80 miles of Smith County," Davidson said.

Mineola, about 80 miles east of Dallas, is a close-knit, conservative bean-processing town of with more than 30 churches. Residents there want to put the scandal behind them as quickly as possible.

The one-story building where prosecutors say four children — the three siblings, now ages 12, 10 and 7, and their 10-year-old aunt — were trained to perform in front of an audience of 50 to 100 once a week has been vacant since the landlord ousted the alleged organizers in 2004.

Down a slight hill is a retirement home, and even closer is the office of the local newspaper. Doris Newman, editor of The Mineola Monitor, said rumors of swinger parties spread around town but that no one mentioned children being involved.

Newman, who can see the building from her office window, said she remembers the parking lot filling up with more than a dozen cars at night.
In August 2004, an editorial under the headline "Sex In the City" opined that if the swingers left quietly, "we'll try and forget they've infiltrated our town with their set of moral standards."
"It's not that we're trying to look the other way," Newman said. "But there's a lot more to Mineola than that."

According to a Mineola police report, the department first investigated a complaint in June 2005 in which the siblings' foster mother said one of the girls described dancing toward men and another child saying that "everybody does nasty stuff in there."

In the second trial, Child Protective Services caseworker Kristi Hachtel testified, "I've seen a lot and I never in my wildest dreams imagined this. They were preyed upon in probably one of the most heinous ways possible."
The children are now doing better, the welfare agency said.
"Through counseling and therapy sessions, these children are now finally feeling secure and safe," agency spokeswoman Shari Pulliam wrote in an e-mail.

Permanent custody of the three siblings was given to John and Margie Cantrell. This week, prosecutors in California charged John Cantrell with sexually assaulting a child in the state 18 years ago. Margie Cantrell said her husband is innocent.

Kelly's attorney moved Friday asking to postpone the trial in light of the allegations against Cantrell, a state witness. Texas Child Protective Services said it would be "common" for the agency to investigate.

The Rev. Tim Letsch is opening a church in the yellow-plastered building where the children were abused. He acknowledges that building a congregation might be difficult because of the stigma attached to the property.

"You got to decide whether you're willing to forgive those kind of things," Letsch said. "It's a hard deal. Especially for a spiritual person to walk in and say, 'This happened here."'

[cupl4fun]

This was in the news again today. They've postponed the trial because they are thinking of bringing further charges. How this is called a swing club I have no idea. Even if lots of people were attending they weren't swingers. There are pedophile groups (at least there are on Criminal Minds) this most likely must have been something along those lines. And, yes two4you it pisses me off as well. Not only are children's lives ruined (which is enough), swingers are vilified, and the lifestyle is portrayed as perversion. This tragedy has nothing to do with swinging! RRRRRRRRRRR!